Nearer, My God, To Thee
by Pargoletta
Summary: London is hit with a deadly flu epidemic, but John slowly begins to suspect that there is a more human agency at work. He, Sherlock, and Sarah must work together in order to identify and track down a ruthless killer.
1. Tis The Season

Note: Welcome to this story! This is the first I've written for this particular fandom, so it's kind of exciting.

Just a few notes before we get going. The villain here is an amalgam of three or four real murderers. I became acquainted with their stories, and with the weapon the villain uses, through a Very Weird Job that I used to have. Credit for John's particular skill in this chapter goes to my sister, and enormous thanks go to valmora for talking through the plot with me.

See you at the end! Enjoy!

* * *

**1. 'Tis The Season**

* * *

Sherlock knew that John was plotting something even before he opened the door. He could hear John talking to someone as he stood just outside, fumbling in his pockets for his keys. John almost never brought friends or acquaintances home after work, and this break in his routine intrigued Sherlock. He quickly removed the snorkelling mask he had been using in lieu of safety goggles, turned down the flame on his Bunsen burner, and poked his head out of the kitchen, just in time to hear the door open.

John strode into the flat, laughing, followed closely by Mrs. Hudson. "Evening, Sherlock," he said as he entered the kitchen. He carried a small zipped cooler bag, which he popped into the refrigerator, shoving the bowl of spleens aside to make room for it.

"Sherlock, isn't this wonderful?" Mrs. Hudson asked. Her eyes twinkled, and it was child's play to deduce that the contents of the cooler bag were the cause of her excitement. "I knew that good things would come of having a doctor living here with us!"

So. Whatever was in the cooler bag was of medical origin. Had John actually brought Sherlock a little something from the surgery to play with? But then, Mrs. Hudson wouldn't be so gleeful.

"I've brought presents for both of you," John announced. "You'll thank me for this."

"Ah," Sherlock said. "Is this part of the 'manners' you've been trying to teach me?"

"Well, no, not exactly, though I wouldn't mind if you did actually thank me. I meant more that you'll be glad to have it when you see what it is." John considered the kitchen table, cluttered as always with Bunsen burners, test tube racks, microscopes, and other scientific detritus, and pointed to a relatively tidier corner. "Can I have that bit of the table for a moment?"

Sherlock shrugged, and shoved the notebooks and pens aside. John pulled the canister of disinfectant wipes from beneath the sink and swabbed the table. "Mrs. Hudson, if you please?"

Mrs. Hudson pulled a garish William-and-Catherine tea towel from her pocket, unfolded it, and spread it over the table corner, as John pulled one of the kitchen chairs around. He inspected the teakettle for stray biohazards, filled it with water, and took three mugs from the cupboard. "You'll stay for tea afterwards, of course, Mrs. Hudson? We've got PG Tips . . ." He pulled a Twinings tin from the cupboard.

"I shouldn't use that if I were you, John," Sherlock put in. "Unless you prefer arsenic, that is."

" . . . and PG Tips," John finished, a little too brightly, dropping tea bags into the mugs. He then went to the refrigerator and took out the cooler bag, which he unzipped to reveal . . . "Ta da! Flu shots for everyone!"

Quick as a flash, Sherlock retreated to his armchair, where he curled up in a defensive little huddle. "No!" he declared. "You will not! I forbid it."

"Sherlock, dear, it's fine," Mrs. Hudson said. "John said that it's all perfectly safe if we wipe off the table and put down a clean tea towel. Oh, you're too young to know, but when I was a girl, doctors made house calls all the time. You don't get service like that these days."

Sherlock tried to wrap the shreds of his affronted dignity around himself. "Why should you bother me with something as trivial as a flu shot, John?" he asked. "It isn't important."

"Flu season's going to hit hard this year," John said. "We're already seeing the first cases down at the surgery. Everyone there has had shots, and we've got so many that Sarah's allowing us to bring some home for family as well."

"Oh, for God's sake, it's just the flu!" Sherlock snapped. "What's so important? Even if I do get it, I'm young and healthy, a few sniffles and it'll be gone in a week, so there's no need for fuss."

John grinned and shook his head. "Not buying what you're selling. Try two weeks, fatigue and muscle aches in addition to the cold symptoms you just described. You'll be bored out of your mind because you won't be able to go out on cases, and I'll be driven barking mad trying to look after you. Flu shots for all. Doctor's orders."

"Come on, Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson wheedled. "It's just a little stick. You've had a lot worse."

Sherlock scowled at her for daring to bring his real objection to John's attention. "If you are referring to . . . past amusements, Mrs. Hudson, then you should know that I have plenty of first-hand experience with needles. They hurt. Full stop. And there's no reward at the end of a flu shot," he added, almost under his breath.

John looked puzzled for a moment, and then laughed. "Well, of course your needles hurt, Sherlock," he said. "You weren't taught to use them nearly as well as I was. One of the advantages of med school." His eyes took on a predatory gleam. "In fact, I'll bet that I can give you the most painless shot you've ever had. Learned how to do it from a nurse, which is really the only way to learn."

"Oh, really," Sherlock drawled. "Do tell me how you do it."

"Nope. That's your job. You get two chances to observe my technique, and then you can tell us what you've deduced."

He was good, Sherlock had to admit. Despite himself, Sherlock was now interested.

John saw the shift in Sherlock's posture, and hauled him out of the armchair. Mrs. Hudson smiled, removed her cardigan, and sat down in the kitchen chair. "Don't worry, dear, I'll go first," she said. "You'll see, it won't hurt at all."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson," John said. He deposited Sherlock in the corner. "You can observe from there." He switched the kettle on and went to the sink to wash his hands. "Now, if everyone cooperates, we'll be done by the time the kettle boils, and we can all have tea."

Sherlock crossed his arms defensively over his chest and watched as John laid out syringes, vials, alcohol wipes, gauze pads, and plasters. He tore open one of the alcohol wipes, swabbed Mrs. Hudson's arm with gallant grace, and then daubed at the area with a gauze pad. He filled one of the syringes, and administered the shot in less than three seconds. Mrs. Hudson smiled at him as he fixed a plaster over the injection site. "That was wonderful, dear," she said. She turned to Sherlock as she pulled her cardigan on. "He's right, you know. It didn't hurt a bit."

She got up from the kitchen chair. John washed his hands again and gestured to Sherlock to sit down. Sherlock did so, silently bemoaning the curse of curiosity that would not let him run away from a puzzle. He kept a weather eye on John as he opened his shirt enough to push it down and expose one shoulder, observing how John opened the second alcohol wipe. The swab was cool on his arm, and John's touch with the gauze was gentle as he patted it dry. John gave him a reassuring smile, filled the second syringe - and in less than three seconds the needle had gone in and out, with no pain at all. Sherlock stared at the pinprick in astonishment as John covered it with a plaster.

"Well done, everyone," John said. He replaced the medical supplies in the cooler bag, put it back in the refrigerator, and washed his hands one last time as Mrs. Hudson picked up the tea towel. The kettle boiled, and then clicked itself off, and Sherlock sucked in a breath as he realized what John had done.

John heard his gasp and smiled. "And well done, Sherlock. Let's get settled with our tea, and then you can tell us all about it."

John did make him wait until they were all ensconced on the sofa, and everyone's cups of tea had been doctored to their satisfaction. It was only after Mrs. Hudson had taken her first sips that John turned to Sherlock. "All right, Sherlock. Dazzle us."

"I've had needles of all different gauges before, so the size of the needle was clearly irrelevant," Sherlock began. "When you said that you had learned from a nurse, well, that can only mean that the secret is in your technique rather than the physical equipment. Your procedure is almost boringly routine, except that you insert an extra stage, where you pat at the disinfection site before you inject the vaccine. Therefore, that must be the trick to a painless injection."

John's face split into a broad grin. "Brilliant, Sherlock! Got it in one. Well, most of it, anyway." He turned to Mrs. Hudson to clarify. "Alcohol disinfects before it dries, and it stings if you put it in a wound. What that nurse taught me was to wipe the liquid off so that the needle won't push any little droplets into the puncture as it goes in."

"Well, would you listen to that?" Mrs. Hudson said. "Isn't it wonderful what you can learn from a doctor, Sherlock? All these years, I thought it was the needle, and here it's the alcohol!"

"Well, it's the needle, too," John said, "though you probably already knew that. Much better to use a needle that's fresh and really sharp. And to do it quickly, in and out."

Sherlock nodded. "I suppose your nurse taught you that as well?"

"Yup. Worked with her on my paediatrics rotation back in school. Got to be fast when you're giving shots to three-year-olds. Came in handy in Afghanistan, too. If it works on a three-year-old child in its mother's arms, it'll work on a nineteen-year-old child in a field hospital. Or, come to think of it, a thirty-five-year-old child in his own kitchen."

"Oh, ha bloody ha."

The doorbell buzzed, and John, who was sitting nearest to the door, pushed himself to his feet. "No, no, Mrs. Hudson, you sit here and enjoy your tea. Be back in a bit." He clattered down the stairs, and Sherlock could hear the door opening and John's voice greeting someone enthusiastically.

"Sherlock!" John called, and then there were footsteps on the stairs again, and John ushered Lestrade into the room. As usual, Lestrade hovered by the door looking vaguely uncomfortable.

Sherlock set his tea down on the coffee table and was on his feet in an instant. "Where is the body, Lestrade?" he asked. "And have you kept Anderson at a safe distance?"

"Er . . . no, not exactly." Lestrade contrived to look even more uncomfortable than usual.

"Brilliant, just brilliant," Sherlock growled. "All the useful information will be destroyed before I even have a chance to look."

"Um, well, sorry to burst your bubble," Lestrade said, "but this time, it's actually John I'm calling for, Sherlock, not you."

That brought Sherlock up short. "John?"

"Me?" John asked, equally befuddled.

"Really?" added Mrs. Hudson.

Lestrade gave a sigh that could best be described as long-suffering. "Yes, really. Yes, John. No, Sherlock, my job does not, in fact, revolve entirely around you."

"What could you possibly need me for?" John asked, just a little bit defensively. "Living bodies are my area. Once they've been murdered, they're Sherlock's."

"Well, that's just it," Lestrade said, clearly relieved to have found a way back to the conversation he had originally intended to have. "We've got a body, but we don't yet know that it was a murder, if you get my drift."

John was silent for a moment. "Ah," he said at last.

"We'd - I'd - very much appreciate it if you could come round and take a look. There's been some pressure on us from the family -"

"And we all know how your skills fare under pressure," Sherlock couldn't resist putting in.

"There's been some pressure on us from the family," Lestrade repeated, a bit more forcefully and with a pointed glare in Sherlock's general direction, "and if it really is a murder, we'd like to get the investigation going as soon as possible, which is why we need your help, Doctor Watson."

"Don't you have people for this?" John asked. "I mean, doesn't Anderson get paid to make these kinds of calls?"

Lestrade sighed. "Anderson called in sick this morning. Got the flu."

John glanced at Sherlock and could not suppress a brief I-told-you-so smirk. "Right," he said. "I'll get my coat. Oh," and he shot a more pointed glance at Sherlock, "and I'm going to need an assistant."

"What?" Sherlock asked, caught genuinely flat-footed.

John pulled Sherlock's coat and scarf off the coat rack and thrust them into his hands. In a low voice, meant just for Sherlock's ears, he said, "Lestrade wouldn't waste his time or ours coming here for a case that he expected to be ordinary, so I'm just going to anticipate things getting very weird very fast. I'll want another pair of sharp eyes on this, and besides, it'll save time explaining the facts to you when things inevitably go pear-shaped. Now, put your coat on and come with us."

"So," Lestrade said, a little awkwardly. "I'll just give you the address and wait for your taxi, then?"

Sherlock opened his mouth to agree, but John beat him to it.

"Not a bit," John replied. "My case, my decisions. We'll save the money and the time and ride along with you. Sorry about the tea, Mrs. Hudson, just leave the cups out, and I'll wash them when we get back."

"Oh, don't worry, dear, just finished the last of mine while you were chatting. I'll take care of things here, just this once since it's an occasion. Not your housekeeper."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Button up, Sherlock. Lestrade, shall we?" With the gallant efficiency that came when Army officer met medical doctor, John chivvied them out and down the stairs.

"She's going to nose around our things," Sherlock pointed out, probably a bit more waspishly than was strictly called for.

"She's an old lady, Sherlock," John replied. "Let her have her fun."

"As long as she doesn't take my skull again."

"Your skull is safe. I got Mycroft to produce paperwork identifying it as a perfectly legitimate paperweight."

"You did not."

"Did too."

"Have fun at your crime scene, dears!" came Mrs. Hudson's voice floating down the stairs.


	2. Nor All Of Death To Die

**2. Nor All Of Death To Die**

* * *

The police car really was a fine ride, John decided, ensconced in the front passenger seat. Relatively clean, comfortable, paid for by someone else, able to siren through red lights, no chance that the driver might suddenly decide to kill you. He could definitely get used to this.

"So . . . er, how's work going? At the surgery?" Lestrade asked.

"Oh, fine. Fine." John made sure to keep his tone chipper, ignoring the dark cloud of sulk emanating from Sherlock in the back seat. "We've got three new faces. Two locum nurses and another locum physician. Flu season, you know?"

"Working out, are they?"

"Brilliantly. One of the nurses is fresh out of school, still wet behind the ears, this'll be the perfect job to toughen her up. The other one is a sweet old grandmotherly type, puts everyone at ease. The Bookends, Sarah calls them."

Lestrade chuckled. "Perfect. One to reassure the kiddies, and one to soften up all the tough blokes who don't fancy going to the doctor's just for a few sniffles."

"And you don't know any of the latter, I'm sure." That elicited a real laugh from Lestrade, and John relaxed back into his seat for the rest of the ride.

* * *

The home of the deceased turned out to be an especially depressing flat in a council estate. Another police car was waiting for them. Lestrade was eager to go in and resolve the issue of murder straight away, but John motioned to him to wait just a moment, then turned to Sherlock.

"Right," he said, "some ground rules. Today, you are my assistant. That means you do what I say. Your job is to observe everything you possibly can and store it to that hard drive of yours for future reference. You do not speak unless spoken to. One unsolicited peep out of your mouth, and . . ." John quickly wracked his brain for a sterner threat than his drill sergeant had used on him, "I will make a medical decision, as your doctor, that both your MMR and your tetanus vaccines need to be updated. Immediately. With very large needles. Understood?"

Sherlock nodded.

"Good." John turned to Lestrade. "We're ready to go in."

The threat of two needles was enough not only to keep Sherlock quiet, but to get him into a blue safety coverall as well. John wished that he could at least wear normal street clothes as he invaded the home of a newly bereaved family, but he settled for his most charming bedside manner instead. Sally Donovan had arrived before him, and was sitting with a weeping middle-aged woman who appeared to be the head of the household.

"She shouldn't've died," the woman wailed. "That doctor told us she'd be all better in a week. She shouldn't've died."

"Elderly white female, Annie Farrell," Donovan murmured to John. "This is Louise Hendrickson, her daughter. Apparently, Mrs. Farrell had a cold or something, and just up and died. The family is convinced it was murder, but we can't prove it. Yet." She caught Sherlock's eye and curled her lip. "Hello, Freak."

Sherlock put his hand over his heart and gave Donovan an exaggerated bow in lieu of speaking. John hid a smile behind his hand. As long as Sherlock and Donovan were sniping at each other, all was right with the world. He approached Louise Hendrickson. "My name is John Watson, and I'm a doctor working with the police," he said. "May I see your mother, ma'am?"

Sniffling, the woman ushered him into a bedroom where the dead body of an old woman was stiffening in the bed, an IV line running from the back of her hand to a bag that was slung from the bedpost. John took one look at her, and his blood ran cold, but he managed to preserve his calm facade just long enough to thank Louise, send her out of the room, and bring in Sherlock and Lestrade. He closed the door behind them and blew out a breath.

"Something wrong, Doctor?" Lestrade asked.

"Yeah, very wrong." John glanced again at Mrs. Farrell's body. "Her daughter is right. She shouldn't have died."

"And you know this how?"

"Because," John said, taking a breath to keep the tremor from his voice, "I saw her just the other day. She's a regular at the surgery. Sarah diagnosed a respiratory infection and dehydration and sent her home. Other than that and a touch of arthritis, she was perfectly healthy. Should have had easily another ten years in her."

He turned back to the body and probed it gently, turning it this way and that, looking for wounds or bloodstains. There were none. From all appearances, Annie Farrell had simply gone to sleep and failed to wake up.

"This," John declared, "is not good."

Lestrade perked up slightly at the thought that John might be on the verge of handing down a quick decision. "So this death -"

"- was unexpected and certainly out of the ordinary, yes. But I can't tell you whether it was a murder until I know what killed her." John ruthlessly squelched a pang of guilt at disappointing Lestrade. After all, the police weren't the only ones who had procedures to follow. "You'll want to order a full autopsy and a tox screen. We'll need a list of all her medications and the bottles so we can count pills. You call the coroner, I'll talk to the daughter."

Louise Hendrickson seemed relieved to hear that John was not immediately dismissing her suspicions about her mother's death, and was more than happy to supply both a list of medications and a bag to put the bottles in. "You'll let us know the minute you finish the autopsy, won't you?" she asked as she scooped pill bottles into the bag.

"The police will contact you," John said. "The pathologist will conduct the autopsy and review the report with DI Lestrade here, and he'll be in touch."

"You won't do it yourself?" Louise looked disappointed.

"Sorry. I'm not a pathologist, and I don't have privileges at any pathology labs in London."

"But she's my mother! She should be with someone who cares about her." John held out his hand for the bag of medications, but Louise took a firm step back and clutched the bag to her chest.

John gritted his teeth and remembered to smile. "Ms. Hendrickson, please. I understand that this is a stressful time for you, but the pathologist will need -" He stopped short when Lestrade's hand came down on his shoulder.

"Dr. Watson will provide your mother with the best care in London," Lestrade told Louise. "Now, if you'll excuse us for just a minute, official business . . . can we step into the bedroom, Dr. Watson?"

John allowed himself to be led out of earshot before he spoke. "Lestrade, I'm not being difficult," he said. "I was a medical officer, and now I'm a GP, but I am not a pathologist. There's a difference."

"Then you won't do the autopsy alone," Lestrade replied, his face grim. "But you'll be there. That woman wants you to take care of her mother, and I want your eyes on this one." He glanced quickly at Sherlock, who was trying to look innocent and failing miserably. "Both of your eyes."

John had only one card left to play. "I wasn't kidding. I'm not allowed to do this. I don't have privileges at any hospital in London."

His heart sank when a familiar hand tugged at his sleeve. Sherlock handed John his mobile. On its screen was a text message.

_Barts temporary staff ID for Dr. Watson arranged. Will await him at lab. Bring box of crackers to Christmas dinner. - MH_

John sighed, and resigned himself to the inevitable.

* * *

At least it was Molly Hooper babysitting him. John could be grateful for that small grace, at least. Molly helped him into his gown without comment, familiar enough with the rules of Holmesian reality that she did not so much as bat an eyelash when John and Sherlock escorted Mrs. Farrell's corpse into her lab the morning after Lestrade's call. Sherlock had been gowned and shown to his observation spot, from which he watched with unconcealed interest as John and Molly approached the body on the slab.

"It's just like cadavers in med school," Molly said, trying to be reassuring. "Except it won't smell quite so strongly of formaldehyde, which I always think is a plus, don't you?"

"I wouldn't know," John muttered. "There's a reason I didn't go into pathology. I prefer living patients to dead ones."

"It'll be easy," Molly said, and angled the microphone down to John's mouth. "We've been over the procedure, and I'll help you."

"All you have to do is determine the cause and manner of death, which shouldn't be too much of a tax even on your mind," Sherlock put in. "I've told you before, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"Yes, very pithy, thank you, Sherlock," John snapped. "You should be writing fortune cookies instead of deducing them. Unfortunately, that's not how this job works. Now, stand back and put your mask on."

"I prefer to have full use of all my senses if I am to observe properly, John."

"Nope. I am at least nominally in charge of this autopsy, and we do not begin until everyone is properly covered. If you don't like it, then go outside, take your mask off, and look up Gloria Ramirez on your mobile."

Sherlock sniffed theatrically to ensure that both John and Molly were fully aware of his displeasure at being limited. But he did put the mask on, and edged as close as he was permitted. John took a deep breath and switched the microphone on.

"Autopsy of elderly white female, Mrs. Anne Farrell," he began. "St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Beginning at 0900 hours."

* * *

By one o'clock, John was quietly seething with frustration. They had been working for four hours, and he could find nothing to indicate how Mrs. Farrell had died. Her face was mildly discoloured, but John could not be sure if it was symptomatic or normal post-mortem lividity. He sighed and turned to Molly. "Cover her up and put her on ice. We'll resume tomorrow, same time."

"What?" Sherlock cried. "You can't just stop!"

"Yes, Sherlock, I can. These things take time. I've hit a dead end, and I have a shift at the surgery that starts in an hour and a half. Don't worry, I haven't quit altogether. I just need a change of scenery, a chance to think about what I've seen so far."

Sherlock frowned, looking very much as though he would have liked to continue the autopsy on his own, but Molly had already wheeled Mrs. Farrell away.

"Go home and mull it over yourself," John said. "Stop and pick up some eggs and mayonnaise on the way. Play your violin a bit. I'll see you tonight after work." He stripped off his mask and gloves and went to wash up.

* * *

John bolted down a quick sandwich and arrived at the surgery with a few minutes to spare before his shift began. Sarah and some of the nurses were sitting in the break room when he arrived, chatting about nothing in particular. John smiled and greeted them politely before pulling his lab coat and stethoscope out of his locker. He was glad of the conversation flowing around him, because, as far as he could tell, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the mysterious deaths of old ladies. He decided to make a quick cup of tea so that he could have an excuse to linger a bit, and switched the kettle on.

"Show him," the younger of the two new nurses said.

"Should I?" Sarah asked. "Not his thing, really."

"Show him," the older nurse replied. "Always good to get a man's opinion, just in case."

John dropped a tea bag in a clean mug and turned around. "Show me what?"

Sarah contrived to look both embarrassed and pleased with herself. "Oh, it's nothing," she said. "My new handbag. I was just showing it off to Libby and Zoë here." She held up a large bag made of turquoise leather with a beaded fringe around the top edge. The handles were of brown leather, and were too short to sling the bag across Sarah's torso, but too long for her to carry the bag at her side. John found the bag uncommonly ugly, but he knew better than to say so out loud.

"Roomy," he said. "I haven't the foggiest what it is that you'd keep in a handbag, but you could probably fit twice as much of it in that one."

Sarah mock-pouted. "You see?" she said to the nurses. "I told you he wouldn't like it."

"It's not that," John improvised. "It's just . . . how much did you pay for it? A bit of fancy leather, you can't even take it most places."

"It was on sale," Sarah said. "Forty percent off."

"Oh. Forty percent. Well, then."

"You!" Sarah fussed, though her heart wasn't in it. She caught John's eye, and seemed to realize that he was teasing her.

"It's pretty," he said. "It brings out your eyes." Apparently, this was the right thing to say. Sarah smiled, and the nurses nodded their approval. The kettle boiled, and John rescued himself by pouring out a cup of tea to prepare him for his shift.


	3. Amusing The Patient

**3. Amusing The Patient**

* * *

After nearly a year of cohabitation, Sherlock could say with some confidence that having a flatmate was certainly one of the more educational experiences of his life. He could observe the normal day-to-day operations of an average human male at astonishingly close range, and he found that his deductions regarding human behaviour had benefited considerably from these observations. Living with John was like having an endless course in human psychology delivered directly to his doorstep. Naturally, the course lacked a syllabus, so that Sherlock could never quite predict what the next topic of instruction would be.

Recently, that topic had been Frustration. John's autopsy of Mrs. Farrell had led only to the most distressingly vague of conclusions. He could not seem to establish a cause of death, but refused to declare the death natural and allow Lestrade to close the case. As a direct result, John had become snappish and irritable, and did not take kindly to even the most helpful suggestions that Sherlock made.

"Poison, John."

"Hmm?" John looked up from the latest issue of _The Lancet_.

"Poison. Mrs. Farrell was poisoned. I'm sure of it."

John snorted. "Thank you, Mr. Helpful."

"Oh, be sensible, John," Sherlock said. "If you would only observe, it's the only logical conclusion. You said yourself that she was too healthy simply to die of old age, and there are no wounds or other traumatic injuries on the body; even a physician of your limited experience would have found them by now. Therefore, the only logical solution that remains is poison."

John set his journal down and rubbed his eyes. "Not helpful, Sherlock. Even if I could find even trace evidence of what she could possibly have taken, that still wouldn't tell me if she was maliciously poisoned or if she simply mixed up her medications or had a drug interaction."

"There are two of us, in case you'd forgotten."

"Yes, I know, Sherlock. For your information, you're hard to ignore."

"Then why are you ignoring me now?" Sherlock sprang to his feet and started to pace. "I could investigate any possible sources of poison. That way, once you discover what poison it was, I'll know how it got to her, and we can give Lestrade everything he needs without wasting time."

John sighed. "The police already questioned Louise Hendrickson and the neighbours. No one saw anyone going to visit Mrs. Farrell on the day she died. I don't know what you'd expect to find that the police couldn't."

"Everything, of course. Lestrade and Donovan have been very helpful at getting rid of the trivia. Let me go and look for the real killer."

"Fine. Whatever. Knock yourself out. But." John held up a warning hand. "Not tonight, please. Do it in the morning."

Sherlock flopped back into his chair. "Bored."

"Play your violin. Go aim some Paganini at Mrs. Turner's. It can be revenge for them blasting Lady Gaga and having loud sex while some of us are trying to sleep."

"Oh, John. Sleeping is boring." But Sherlock got up and opened his violin case anyway.

* * *

Questioning the neighbours yielded less information than Sherlock had hoped. Many of them were elderly, and their sight, hearing, and recall were not what they had been. Mostly, they only recalled trivial oddities, a cat behaving strangely, or a set of keys going missing. Eventually, John allowed Louise Hendrickson to go ahead and bury her mother, but advised Lestrade to keep the case open anyway. And soon enough, there was another source of frustration for Sherlock to examine.

As predicted, flu season hit London hard that year. John's hours at the surgery increased, and he even managed to pick up some extra cash with regular stints of locum work at Barts as their staff succumbed as well. John distributed small bottles of alcohol gel liberally around the flat, and even showed up at Scotland Yard with a case of the stuff to hand around to Lestrade and the rest of the homicide squad. This irritated Sherlock, who could no longer find an excuse to needle Anderson about his ongoing affair with Donovan. While it was true that they both smelled of alcohol gel, so did everyone on the squad.

John's temper grew shorter as his hours grew longer, and Sherlock realized that he would have to do something to compensate before their living situation grew intolerable. A chance conversation with Mrs. Hudson inspired him.

He was deep in the middle of a comparative experiment that involved inducing a particular chemical reaction involving several brands of liquid dish detergent, some industrial strength hydrogen peroxide, a small bottle of food dye, and potassium iodide. Mrs. Hudson strolled into the flat just as the chemicals reacted, but she simply smiled and set a covered dish down on the counter, ignoring the rapidly growing globs of warm, bright pink foam that were drowning the table.

"I made a little too much spaghetti, so I thought you might like a snack, dear," she said. "My, what a lovely shade of pink. I do wish someone had taught me how to do things like that. You will clean it up, won't you, there's a good boy."

Sherlock ignored the last statement. "It's basic chemistry, Mrs. Hudson," he said. "Anyone could learn it in school."

"Oh, no, not in my day, dear, not the girls. We only had lessons in Applied Chemistry."

"By which was meant . . . ?"

"Cooking." And Mrs. Hudson set the plate of spaghetti in front of Sherlock and handed him a fork, a spoon, and a napkin. She took a last look at the pink foam, gave a little sigh of envy, patted Sherlock on the shoulder and left. It really was very good spaghetti, though Sherlock decided to blame John for the stab of guilt that came with the first few bites. But, by the time he finished the plate, he had had a much better idea. He set the plate in the sink and rummaged through the kitchen cabinets.

* * *

John arrived home at his usual hour. His usual greeting was subdued, he was pale and hunched with exhaustion, and he favoured his leg a little bit as he shed his coat and dropped heavily onto the sofa. A trained monkey could have deduced that John's day at the surgery had not gone well, and that he was therefore in the perfect state for Sherlock's newest experiment. Sherlock quickly assembled the contents of several beakers, loaded the results onto a tray, and at the last minute decided to add some parsley. It was time for the field test. He carried the tray carefully into the sitting room and set it down on the coffee table in front of John, then stood back to await results.

John was so deep in his own thoughts that it took a few moments for him to notice Sherlock's offering, and then another few moments for him to process the sensory input before him.

"Spaghetti," he said after a minute.

"Very good, John."

"You made this?"

Sherlock nodded. "I am a degreed chemist and a member of the Forensic Science Society, John. I think I can be trusted to make a simple plate of spaghetti."

"A debatable point in your case, but not really the issue." John blinked at the spaghetti a few times, as if trying to convince himself that it was both real and what it purported to be. "I suppose I'm just wondering . . . why?"

Sherlock was intrigued to discover that he suddenly could not look John in the eye. "Because you've been working hard, and it makes you grumpy, and the flat is less pleasant when you're grumpy, and I decided that if you were properly fed, then you might be less inclined to stomp around and sigh tonight."

John stared at him for a moment. "You saw that I've been having a hard time at work, and so you cooked supper to make me feel better," he translated.

"I believe I said that."

John looked at the spaghetti again, then leaned forward and buried his face in his hands and took a few deep breaths. Sherlock frowned. This experiment was not going as planned. "John?" he asked. "Not good?"

John raised his head, and Sherlock saw that his eyes were damper than usual. "Very good, Sherlock. It's been years since anyone tried to cheer me up after a hard day at work with a home-cooked supper. Thank you." He took a bite of spaghetti and smiled. "This is good. I didn't know you could cook."

"Applied chemistry, please." Sherlock returned to the kitchen just long enough to assemble his own plate, and brought it out to the sitting room, where he settled himself on the floor in front of the coffee table so that he could face John while they ate.

John ate about half of his spaghetti before he looked Sherlock in the eye. "Sherlock, I know that you didn't like getting your flu shot, but I have to tell you that I'm glad I gave it to you."

"Why?"

"Because this year's flu is bad. It's already turning into pneumonia, and today . . . today someone died of it."

Sherlock stopped eating and stared at John.

"Young guy, barely more than a kid," John said quietly. "He was pretty sick when he came in, and . . . I'm not sure what happened. He just collapsed, right there in the exam room. One of the nurses was working on him, but he just . . . slipped away. That won't happen to you now, no matter how many flu germs I bring home."

"Oh." Sherlock didn't quite know what to make of this. It would appear that John cared about him far more than Sherlock had suspected. Either that, or it was the stress and exhaustion talking. There was no good way to tell. "That was good. I suppose."

John gave him a wry smile and resumed eating. Perhaps the next best thing to do would be to distract him.

"I think I'm almost ready to solve the puzzle about that schoolgirl's disappearance," Sherlock offered.

"Good for you."

"There's just one more test I need to run. Perhaps you could help me?"

John shrugged. "Kind of busy these days."

"It'd be quick. Talk to Sarah. I need some tampons."

To his credit, John did not miss a bite of spaghetti. "You can buy them. No rule against men buying them. The shop girls won't even laugh at you these days."

"No, you really must talk to Sarah. I require used tampons."

John paused in his chewing for just a moment. "Sorry, Sherlock. You said it yourself, heroes don't exist. You're on your own for this one. You'll have to talk to Sarah yourself."

Oh, well. It had been worth a try, at least. Perhaps he would just ask Molly instead.

* * *

Over the course of the next few weeks, more patients died of the flu. There were not so many as to send the city into a panic, but each new death seemed to affect John personally. He commented often about how it was the worst flu epidemic he had ever seen, and commended the other doctors and the nurses who worked at his side.

The epidemic was also starting to affect the rest of the medical personnel that Sherlock knew. Molly had actually burst into tears one morning after a particularly busy night in the mortuary, and Mike Stamford now refused to let Sherlock into his lab without a mask on, even though Sherlock explained that he had already had his flu shot. Anderson had recovered from his bout, but looked as if he might relapse at any moment.

The homicide squad had stopped looking surprised when Sherlock showed up without John at his side. One day, Lestrade took Sherlock aside and pressed an envelope into his hand. "It's for John," he said. "Just a little card to cheer him up. We all signed it. Can you give it to him for us, next time you see him?"

Sherlock could do better than that. He caught a cab to the surgery, where the receptionist informed him that Dr. Watson would come to see him as soon as he had a free moment, and in the meantime, Sherlock was welcome to sit in the waiting room. Sherlock ignored the coughing people and squalling babies as best he could, losing himself in looking up answers to questions on his mobile. His patience was rewarded when he suddenly knew who had murdered the librarian in Wimbledon. A slow smile spread over his face as he texted Lestrade.

_The diamonds are fake, but the cobra is real. Arrest the docent at the Historical Society. - SH_

He was still smiling when the door opened, and John emerged, a grandmotherly nurse at his side. "Well, you're smiling, so the news can't be all bad," John said, as Sherlock rose to greet him.

"I've solved the Wimbledon case," Sherlock announced.

John smiled, as though this news relieved him of a burden of care. "I'm glad. One of us is doing his job, at least."

"John, don't be ridiculous. Not every patient in this room is going to die of the flu. Surely your medical degree is worth a few pence more than the paper it's printed on."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." John rolled his eyes, but his smile did not fade.

His remark jogged Sherlock's memory, and Sherlock fished in his coat pocket and brought out the envelope and his wallet. "From the Yard. I'm told that they all signed it." He extracted a twenty from his wallet and pressed it into John's hand on top of the envelope. "From me. Take a cab home. I don't want to wait for you to come by Tube."

"Thanks. I will. I'll see you tonight. Try not to set the place on fire with jelly babies or something."

"Of course, John." He'd been planning to use Swedish Fish anyway. "Shall I . . . perform another act of applied chemistry tonight?"

"Please. Break's over. I'll see you tonight." John turned around and walked back to the exam area. The grandmotherly nurse tossed Sherlock a look of black disdain as she followed him, probably intended as retaliation for the unforgivable crime of pulling John away from his patients for all of five minutes. Sherlock deleted it, turned on his heel so that his coat would swing, and left the surgery.


	4. We Grasp The Wind

**4. We Grasp The Wind**

* * *

John stretched mightily as he left his office after the last patient of the evening. There had been another flu death at Barts that morning, and John had had to break the news to the woman's wife immediately before reporting to his shift at the surgery. He was desperately in need of some time to sit quietly and not think about much of anything, and was seriously considering stopping off at the pub on the way home. Sherlock could get his own supper, if he wanted anything to eat.

On his way out the door, John noticed a gleam of light shining beneath the door to Sarah's office. She had been working as hard as he had, perhaps harder, scheduling and coordinating services as well as seeing patients. She probably needed a drink more than John did. He tapped on the door, then pushed it open.

Sarah looked up from a mass of paper that covered her desk, and smiled blearily at John. "Leaving?"

"Half past eight."

"Oh, God, is it that late?" Sarah scrubbed her hands through her hair. "I completely lost track of time. But I think I've found something. Look."

John moved so that he could look over Sarah's shoulder. The charts for all the flu victims seen by the surgery were spread out over her desk. "Doing your own morbidity and mortality?"

"Mmm. I think there's a pattern here. Look at all these charts. Here are the ones who lived, and here are the deaths. See it?"

"My eyes are crossing, I'm so tired," John admitted. "What do you see?"

"Lots of poor people, lots of blacks and Asians, lots of immigrants dying. The only well-off white deaths are gay or lesbian."

John shrugged, though a small portion of his brain squealed an alarm. "Wouldn't you expect more deaths from poorer communities, with lower quality of life?"

Sarah shook her head. "The proportions are wrong. I have a degree in public health, John. This just looks . . . wrong, to me. What's it like down at Barts? You're picking up shifts there, aren't you?"

"I am." John scrunched his nose and thought back over the previous few weeks. "You're right. Not a whole lot of poor patients, but an awful lot of the ones dying are black or Asian or gay."

He stared again at Sarah's charts, his fatigue lifting just enough that he realized that there was another common factor, but not enough to let him figure out what that common factor was. But one thing that he had learned in Afghanistan was to trust his instincts. "Sarah, I don't think these people died of the flu."

Sarah said nothing for a long moment, which John counted as a positive first step, in that she did not dismiss his statement out of hand. "The coroner certified them," she offered at last, though it came out less as argument than as a request for information.

"Coroners can be wrong," John said, his mind firmly on Annie Farrell.

"If it wasn't the flu, then what was it?"

It was the tail end of a hard day, and both of their brains seemed to be making the same leap toward the horror of a new and unidentified plague. "I don't know," John said. "But I know someone who's good at puzzles."

Sarah nodded. She had been very understanding about Sherlock, even after the incident with the Chinese acrobats, for which John was eternally grateful. "What can I do to help?"

John considered the question for a moment, trying to see the problem from Sherlock's point of view. "Samples," he said. "We don't know what we're dealing with here, so we'll need as much raw data as possible. Can you authorise it or collect it or liberate it or something?"

"I can do that here. You'll have to work on someone else at Barts."

"Right. I'm on it." John gave a crisp nod and left the building.

* * *

Molly Hooper proved to be a godsend once again. Two days later, John arrived home once again bearing his cooler bag. He followed the scent of acrid smoke to the kitchen, where Sherlock was just replacing the fire extinguisher on its hook. "How'd you like to try a bit of forensic pathology?" John asked by way of greeting.

Sherlock looked interested. "You're asking me, not Anderson or Miss Hooper. That indicates that the nature of the problem is complicated, too complicated for their ordinary minds. You're asking me at home rather than ringing me from the surgery or from Barts, so there is an aspect of secrecy to this case; you don't want people to know that I'm investigating. Perhaps you wish to conceal this investigation from one particular person."

"Yes, mostly true," John said. "And there are some tricky questions about jurisdiction, which you don't pay attention to, but I do. I don't know if it is a 'case' yet; that's what I need you to determine."

He thrust the cooler bag into Sherlock's hands. "In there are blood samples. I won't tell you who the donors are or where the samples come from. I need you to run any test you can think of on these samples. Look for something, anything, that's unusual or out of the ordinary and that is common to these samples. That's all I can give you to go on."

Sherlock opened the bag and glanced at the numbered vials inside. "You suspect something about these donors."

"Yes, I do. I'll tell you my reasons later, or you can deduce them yourself. Just find out what's going on with these people." John looked around and waved away the last traces of smoke, which, he now noticed, had a distinctly candy-like tang on top of the acrid burn. "Suddenly, I feel like Chinese tonight. Lo mein all right with you?"

* * *

Sherlock spent several days working on the samples in the kitchen before moving to the lab at Barts. The transfer made John feel oddly vindicated. If it was enough to stump even Sherlock Holmes for days, then no one else could be faulted for not catching the problem earlier.

While Sherlock worked in the lab, John and Sarah met at cafes to review the case notes on the deaths. Several aspects of the situation piqued John's interest. As it turned out, Barts had taken on an unusual number of locum staff that winter as the flu took hold.

"That shouldn't be unusual," Sarah said over a scone one evening. "Barts isn't really equipped to handle this kind of emergency."

"But that's a lot of strange workers going in and out," John said.

"Are you saying you think this is . . ." Sarah bit back her first description and settled on "deliberate?"

"I'm not saying anything for right now," John replied. "Well, no. Here's what I'm saying. Here's what I'm asking of you, as administrator. Don't leave patients alone with practitioners any more. Make sure you've always got two staff members in the room with them."

Sarah pursed her lips as she considered this. "That's not easy, John. We can barely keep ourselves staffed as it is."

"Then it'll have to be med school hours for everyone. At least until Sherlock figures out what's going on. At least think about it. You could be saving people's lives here."

Sarah stared hard at John. "I'll see what I can do," she said after a moment. "Might mean taking on more locums, though I'm not sure I want to do that, if recent quality is any indication."

John quirked up a corner of his mouth. "Are you saying something about me, then?"

"No," Sarah laughed hastily. "You're fine. At least, when Sherlock isn't running you ragged. It's just . . . I called an old boyfriend, who works in one of the statistics agencies."

"Did he have anything interesting to say?" John took a larger swig of his tea than perhaps he should have, but he ignored the burn as it went down.

"Barts is experiencing the most flu deaths this season so far," Sarah said. "They've also taken on lots of locum staff. I don't like to think that the quality of locum doctors is going down, but I don't want to hire people who are not qualified to be at my surgery. They can't all be skilled Army doctors with exciting personal lives, but they can at least be competent."

It wasn't all that funny, but John laughed anyway. Things would probably get worse before they got better, and he had learned to take laughter when he got it.

* * *

John was covering a morning shift at Barts when his pager beeped. The page originated from the lab where Sherlock habitually set up camp, which piqued his interest immediately. But he made sure to maintain his friendliest smile as he finished his examination of a little girl whose stomach had been pumped.

"You'll be back in school again before you know it, Karen," he told her. "And then you can tell all of your friends about the differences between paracetamol and breath mints." He gave Karen's mother similar reassurances, handed them off to a nurse, and rushed to the lab.

Sherlock was practically buzzing with excitement. He had two vials of blood ensconced between two columns of lab devices. "High-performance liquid chromatography," he said as soon as John opened the door."

"Sorry, what?"

"High-performance liquid chromatography, John. Do keep up. That's the key. I analyzed all these blood samples, and the chromatograph finally turned something up."

John shut the door, and then pulled the window blinds for good measure. "What did you find?" he asked in a low voice.

"Not much. But something, at least." Sherlock pointed to the chromatograph's readouts, which he had printed and arranged on the lab bench. "All of the samples except two show high concentrations of choline. Very high, in fact."

John's heart pounded. "Which were the two that had the normal concentration?"

"Number three and number eight."

John blew out a breath, even as adrenalin surged through his veins. "Dear God. Three and eight were the control samples. Sarah and I were the donors."

Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "And the others . . ."

"Were from patients here and at the surgery who died of the flu."

"No, they didn't."

"You're right," John said. "You've just confirmed that. And I think I have an idea what they did die of."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Poison?"

John nodded. "A particularly bad one, if I'm right. Almost completely undetectable, it metabolizes so fast. You and a South African team about ten years ago are the only ones to have come up with anything approaching a reliable test."

Sherlock preened a little at the praise. "Your deduction, John?"

"Anaesthesiologists don't talk to law enforcement nearly as much as they should, certainly not as much as they talk to assassins. Ever heard of a drug called succinylcholine chloride?"

"Hmm." Sherlock's eyes unfocused for a moment as he searched his memory. "Dubai. Nevada. Texas. Florida."

"It's a paralytic used during emergencies or in surgery," John said. "I've used it; you've probably had it. It works fast, in less than a minute if you give it IV, a little longer through muscle. Creates a temporary neuromuscular block, including the respiratory muscles. It's only supposed to be used by medical personnel with a ventilator ready to go."

"And if not, the patient suffocates," Sherlock replied. "Brilliant."

"Cruel."

"But brilliant. Deceiving medical examiners all over the world. Well, they're no match for me, of course, but still."

John frowned, as the elation of discovery faded before its implications. "We know how. But we don't know who, and we don't know why. Why some and not others, why these killings in the first place."

"We know who," Sherlock objected. "A medical professional, obviously, who has access to powerful drugs."

"Not good enough. In case you hadn't noticed, this place is simply crawling with medical professionals. We're looking for a needle in a haystack."

"The drug is controlled, isn't it?" Sherlock asked. "Someone had to have kept a record of who accesses it. We just have to see if there's any missing. Then we correlate that information with the people who could have taken it. One of them will be our killer."

John sighed. "Mike Stamford can probably help you there, if you can get him to look up the information without telling him too much. My shift here is over in an hour, and then I've got to get to the surgery and warn Sarah."

Sherlock nodded and began to clean up the lab. John squared his shoulders and marched off for a final hour of rounds, trying to shake the feeling that someone was watching him.


	5. A Mortal Paleness On My Cheek

**5. A Mortal Paleness On My Cheek**

* * *

Not for the first time, Sherlock was glad that he had made the acquaintance of Mike Stamford. The man was cheerful, friendly, eager to help, and entirely oblivious to anything of real importance. As far as Sherlock was concerned, Stamford's primary use was delivering good things to Sherlock Holmes. First, access to a hospital lab full of expensive, bulky, and useful equipment, then an entirely adequate and increasingly interesting flatmate, and now a complete inventory of the drug lockups at Barts along with lists of the personnel who had accessed them within the past month. The lists were long, and Sherlock headed home to examine them in the comfort of his own flat, where there was always the possibility that Mrs. Hudson might decide to make him a cup of tea.

Briefly, Sherlock considered alerting Lestrade to the presence of what appeared to be a new and fiendishly clever serial killer. But he decided against it, theorizing that it was too early in the investigation to involve the police. After all, the only solid information that he and John had was the name of a potential murder weapon and a broad field of occupation. Lestrade and a rotating cast of Crown Prosecutors had repeatedly shouted at Sherlock about the concepts of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, the differences between the two, and the existence of arrest warrants, which Sherlock regarded as minor bureaucratic trivia standing between him and solutions.

Mrs. Hudson was not at home, so tea would have to wait for John's arrival. Sherlock flopped down on the couch and flipped through the drug inventories. He had never realized quite how many locations Barts had for drug storage, but it made sense, with all the HIV and cancer patients the hospital saw on a daily basis.

Sherlock's mobile beeped, and he saw that he had a text message.

_Warned Sarah. Pulled her out of staff meeting. Inventory tonight. - JW_

After a moment's thought, Sherlock sent a reply.

_Lots of drugs at Barts. Tea required. - SH_

His mobile beeped again.

_PG Tips on shelf near kettle. - JW_

Well, it had been worth a try, at least.

* * *

Sherlock had just finished going through the drug lockup records when he heard footsteps on the stairs. It was significantly later than the time that he generally expected John home, and, unusually, there were two people. Perhaps John had brought Mrs. Hudson to have tea with them?

The guest turned out to be Sarah Sawyer. She looked tired from a long day of work and possibly a bit of premenstrual tension, though Sherlock was not about to say those words out loud in the presence of any woman ever again, not after what had happened when he had asked Molly about her tampons. John carried a banker's box, and Sarah held a large, ugly handbag and a carrier bag that emitted a distinctly Thai odour.

"Hello, Sherlock," she said.

"Dr. Sawyer."

"I brought Sarah over to hear what you have to say," John explained. "If something needs to be done at the surgery, Sarah's the one to do it, and this is more efficient than having me relay the information at work tomorrow afternoon."

"We brought dinner," Sarah said, as if this was not completely obvious, "and our drug lockup records and purchase orders." She handed the carrier bag off to John and extracted a thick binder from her handbag.

This was much more useful. Sherlock seized the binder with the purchase orders. "Stamford should have given me the ones from Barts," he said.

"You're welcome," John replied. "I'll just go and dish up dinner. Pad thai all right with you, Sarah?"

"Yes, please. Sherlock?"

Sherlock waved her away, too fascinated by the box of records to bother. "Working."

"He doesn't eat while he's working," John called from the kitchen. "I'm just setting aside a portion in the refrigerator for later. Drunken Noodles are on the top shelf between the milk and the eyeballs, Sherlock."

A few minutes later, John and Sarah were comfortably ensconced in the armchairs with plates of Thai food on trays in their laps as Sherlock paced. "So," Sarah said, licking sauce off of her fingers, "we think someone's poisoning people with succinylcholine?"

"From the evidence we have, yes," Sherlock answered.

"What evidence? Who is it?" Sarah's eyes flashed. "I'll fire that person on the spot."

John actually laughed a little. "Sherlock and I were thinking more along the lines of arresting them for murder. But we have to find them first."

Sherlock picked up the banker's box. "I'm going to start by finding out what employees have access to drugs at both Barts and the surgery. That seems a likely way to narrow down the list, since the poisonings happen at both places."

There was a sudden silence from the armchairs. Sherlock turned around to see that John had shoved his plate aside only half-finished. He and Sarah were looking uncomfortably at each other. "Sherlock," John said quietly, "that makes me a suspect. I'm doing locum work in both places."

Sherlock thought for a moment. "Are you the poisoner?"

"No. But what if I just lied to you in cold blood? Someone who injects patients with a poison that suffocates them to death while they're conscious wouldn't have a problem lying to you about it."

For once, Sherlock didn't have an answer to that. He thought about Jim from IT, and had to admit that he could be fooled.

It was Sarah who broke the silence. "I have a surgery to run," she said. "I have to trust someone. It might as well be you, John."

"Don't leave me alone with patients," John said. "Not until Sherlock clears me."

Sarah nodded, though she did not look happy about it. "Right," she said. "It seems like one of my staffing problems is solved, though." She turned to Sherlock. "If you think this killer is someone with privileges at Barts and at my surgery, then it's got to be one of the locum workers. John, Dr. Morris, and the Bookends - that's our two new nurses. None of our other staff have privileges at other institutions. I've only got to schedule shadows for the four of them."

"Should we lay in some neostigmine?" John asked. "In case it happens again."

"Not worth it. I'll call up a friend at University College Hospital, see if we can borrow an extra ventilator, just until you catch the killer."

Sherlock listened to the two doctors discussing patient care and artificial respiration. He decided that any future poisoning victims at the surgery would be in adequate hands. Perhaps, if they were very lucky, John or Sarah might manage to save a victim who could identify the killer. But, as wonderful as luck would be, hard work was the surer route. Sherlock gathered up his growing collection of records and carted them off to his room where he could sort them in peace.

* * *

John wore a tense, strained expression when he went to work the next day. Unlike Sherlock, John was not accustomed to being suspected of committing crimes, and it was clearly causing him stress that even Sherlock's most skilful applied chemistry could not cure. Therefore, he decided to spend his time on a more useful activity, tracking the relationship between the surgery's four locum workers and the suspected succinylcholine deaths. By eleven o' clock, Sherlock was able to text John with the good news.

_Have cleared you. Four deaths at Barts when you were at surgery. - SH_

John must have been in an exam, since his reply arrived twenty minutes later.

_Fantastic. I'll be at surgery one to seven. Text news to Sarah before I get there. - JW_

Sherlock passed the message along, and then settled down to correlate the movements of the other locum workers with the family and associates of Annie Farrell. The process was long and relatively tedious, but Sherlock persisted, following the trails and narrowing them down one by one. By twenty past two, he thought that he saw a pattern dancing just beyond the reach of his mind. A few more leads to check, and he would see it, and perhaps solve the puzzle once and for all.

A knock on the door shattered his concentration. "Damn," he muttered, stalking over to the door, fully expecting to have to shout at Mrs. Hudson and whatever food she had brought upstairs with her. Instead, he found himself confronting a different old lady, dressed in a severe black skirt suit, carrying a matching handbag, and wearing a black hat with a brim that partially obscured her face. Her mouth was pursed disapprovingly, reminding Sherlock of something he had seen somewhere before, though he could not place it immediately.

"What do you want?" he asked. "Who let you in?"

"My, you don't waste time, do you?" the woman said. "Your landlady let me in, said I'd find you up here. Are you Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yes, I am. Who are you?"

"The consulting detective," the woman said. "I saw your website, thought you might be able to help me. I'm Caroline Porter, and I'm looking for my husband, Arthur. Vanished several years ago."

"You're lying," Sherlock said, but he could not keep the fascination from his voice.

"Oh, very well. More than several years ago. You'd have been a kid at the time. Scrawny little thing, most likely, weren't you?" Mrs. Porter pushed past Sherlock and planted herself firmly in John's armchair.

"What are you doing there?" Sherlock demanded. "That's not yours. And I'm not a private eye, thank you."

"Your website says you're a consulting detective. I'm consulting you." Mrs. Porter's mouth twisted into a sour smile. "I'd have thought you'd be glad of the business. Living here in squalor with your . . . your _companion_. This place wants a woman's touch."

"Not. My. Area," Sherlock forced out through gritted teeth.

"Clearly. Still, as I must associate with your sort, I may as well make it worth your while."

"Fine. Suit yourself." Whatever pattern had been about to float through Sherlock's mind had vanished irretrievably. He might as well listen to this woman's petty problem, as she clearly intended to stay in his flat until she had spoken her piece.

Mrs. Porter spoke at some length about her husband, her mother, and her three children. For someone who had demanded help finding him, she didn't seem especially fond of Mr. Porter, referring several times to his less-than-stellar earning power and the low standard of living to which he had brought his wife. Her relationship with her mother was complicated, but so was Sherlock's relationship with his own mother, and he suspected that this was an area in which he approached societal norms rather more than usual. She considered her daughter and her older son to be moral lost causes, but still held out hope for her younger son.

It was exactly the sort of boring life story that played on the daytime dramas that sometimes filtered up from Mrs. Hudson's apartment, except that this woman's dialogue was far less witty. Sherlock got up and stalked into the kitchen, wondering what he might do to chase the nattering old woman away. The reaction with the dish liquid would require annoying clean-up attention afterward, but perhaps the thing with the Swedish Fish . . .

"You fucking queer, you're not even listening to me!" Mrs. Porter snapped. Sherlock whirled around to find that she had followed him into the kitchen, her eyes blazing with rage. "Bloody fudge-packers demand that honest people listen to their demands to destroy good solid families, and they don't even listen to us!" She flung her hand out and knocked a rack of test tubes onto the floor, where they shattered. Sherlock cursed and turned around to grab the brush and dustpan.

"You probably don't even remember what I do!" Mrs. Porter went on.

"I do," Sherlock replied, sweeping up the largest of the shards. "You're a -"

"I'm a nurse," Mrs. Porter said. "I know what's good for people. And what's good for you, Sherlock Holmes, is a flu shot."

Sherlock dumped the glass shards in the bin. "Already had one," he said.

"Not this one. You'll never have the flu again."

As Sherlock turned around to dispute that, there was a sudden stinging pain in his arm. He jerked his arm away, and heard two small objects hit the ground. One bounced, and the other shattered. Now there would be something else to clean up. He turned around and saw that Mrs. Porter was rummaging in her handbag. "You stupid woman," he said. "I told you, I already had a . . ." His eyelid began to twitch, yet another idiotic distraction in a day already full of them.

"John gave me a flu shot," he managed, slurring the words. His eyelids were shuddering uncontrollably now, and his lips were suddenly flabby and hard to move. Through his fluttering lashes, he saw Mrs. Porter pulling a syringe and a vial of medicine out of her handbag. "Tha's no' a flu sho'. Wha' is . . ."

"Security," Mrs. Porter said. "You didn't get the full first dose, so you have to have a booster. I'm a nurse. It's good for you." And she plunged the needle into Sherlock's arm.

The shot hurt, and Sherlock tried to cry out, but the air simply whooshed silently from his lungs. His entire body shuddered and gave way, his arm sweeping more lab equipment off the table as he went down, his head striking first the edge of the table and then the floor, but he did not lose consciousness. His eyes refused to open, his body would not move, and he could not manage to draw a breath. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard Mrs. Porter's voice.

"You'll be out of your misery soon, one more bit of sickness removed from this earth." And then footsteps as she walked away.

Stunned, blinded, paralyzed, his chest beginning to scream for oxygen, Sherlock could not be sure if the footsteps on the stairs were moving down or up.


	6. Breathing's Boring

**6. Breathing's Boring**

* * *

John had just finished removing a pea from the nose of a two-year-old and was washing his hands when his mobile vibrated. Ordinarily, he ignored most of the messages that he got from Sherlock during the workday, as they tended toward the well-worn themes of boredom and demands for service. But today, they were in the middle of an investigation that directly affected John's working conditions, so he dried his hands and flipped the mobile open. The first surprise was that it was a call, not a text. The second surprise was that the caller was Mrs. Hudson.

"John, dear, I'm awfully sorry to bother you at work," she said, "but I just have to know. Is there a worse flu going around? Only a public health nurse just showed up at the door, she said that she was going around with flu shots for a new strain and went up to see Sherlock about it. Is that true? Should I get one?"

John's eyes bulged, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe. "No, Mrs. Hudson," he said. "That is not true. There is no new strain, and no one is sending nurses door-to-door. Stay put, I'm coming home."

He hung up and dashed out into the reception area. "Sarah, got to go, trouble at home, they've got Sherlock," he called, grabbing his jacket.

"I'm coming with you," Sarah replied. She paused only a moment to seize her ridiculous turquoise handbag, waved an apology at the receptionist, and followed John out the door. John waved down a taxi.

"221 Baker Street, as fast as you can, it's an emergency," he told the driver. He bundled himself and Sarah into the taxi, and they sped off. John spared a moment to wish with all his heart that this taxi were equipped with a police siren, then dug out his mobile and rang Lestrade's direct line at Scotland Yard.

"Lestrade, it's John Watson. Can you meet us at Baker Street? I have good reason to believe that Sherlock is in serious trouble."

Lestrade must have picked up on the edge of controlled panic in John's voice, because he didn't argue or ask for more information. "I'm on my way," he said, and hung up.

John stared out the windows of the taxi, willing it to go faster. In the back of his brain, he heard the rumble of the other trucks in convoy, the voices of officers barking orders, and the muffled explosions of IEDs. What had Mycroft said when they first met? _When you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield_. Sarah clasped John's hand, and he could not tell which one of them was shaking.

The taxi cut through a yellow light, and John could see the corner of Baker Street approaching. He fished a twenty out of his wallet. The taxi turned onto Baker Street, and John saw Mrs. Hudson standing at the door, her hands fluttering in distress. The taxi slowed, and John thrust the twenty at the driver and opened the door, his feet hitting the pavement just as the taxi came to a complete stop. He hurried to his front door, with Sarah just behind him. As they approached, John heard a horrible crash from upstairs.

He sprinted up the stairs, grateful to Sherlock that he could do that, and burst into the flat to find Sherlock sprawled on the kitchen floor amidst the shattered pieces of half of his chemistry set. "Mrs. Hudson, dial 999 now!" he snapped. "We need an ambulance."

He dropped to his knees beside Sherlock. "Sherlock, it's John, can you hear me?" There was no reply. Sherlock was bleeding from a cut on his head, and his lips were slowly becoming cyanotic. John bent down and put his ear to Sherlock's mouth and his fingers on Sherlock's carotid artery. The pulse was too fast, and there was no breath. John sealed his mouth over Sherlock's and gave two quick breaths. They went in, but Sherlock did not respond.

"Not breathing," John reported. Sarah opened her ludicrous, oversized handbag and pulled out a bag valve mask. In that moment, John could have cried and kissed her. She gave him an encouraging little smile, fitted the bag and the mask together, and squeezed the bag a few times to test it. "Bag him," John told her. Sarah placed the mask over Sherlock's face, John held it in place, and Sarah began to pump.

Mrs. Hudson hovered nearby. "I've got Emergency Services on the phone," she said. John adjusted his grip on the mask and took the phone.

"Emergency Services, this is Pippa Edwards, what is your emergency?" came over the line.

"This is Dr. John Watson, at 221B Baker Street," John answered. "I have a thirty-five-year-old male, Sherlock Holmes, unresponsive, apnoeic, tachy at . . ." he checked his watch, "about 120, blunt force head injury of unknown origin. Dr. Sarah Sawyer has him bagged, but we need intubation and transport."

"The ambulance is on its way, Dr. Watson. About seven minutes out."

John turned to Mrs. Hudson. "Go downstairs and meet the ambulance. It should be here in seven minutes." Mrs. Hudson left without a word. John looked at Sarah, steadily pumping air into Sherlock's lungs. "Thank you," he said softly.

"We had a poisoner who kills by suffocation," she said. "I thought I might as well be prepared."

"You should get a medal. Or at least dinner."

Sarah gave a wry smile at that. John turned his attention back to Sherlock. The cut on his head didn't look deep, but John needed to examine further. Sarah took over his grip on the mask as he pulled his penlight from his chest pocket and peeled back Sherlock's eyelids. He flashed the light briefly in each eye.

"Pupils dilated and . . . oh, dear God."

As soon as he took the light away, Sherlock had tried to focus on him. Whatever had caused his breathing to stop and his heart rate to soar had left him conscious, at least to a degree. A horrible suspicion swept through John, but he put it aside to deal with later. There were more immediate things to deal with.

"Sherlock? Sherlock, it's John. Listen to me. You're going to be okay. Sarah and I are taking care of you, and there's an ambulance on its way. We're going to stay with you and keep you bagged, so you hang in there and don't be afraid."

There was no response, but that meant nothing now. John kept one hand on Sherlock's carotid and glanced around the kitchen, trying to find something, anything, that would explain what had happened. Surely he had lived with Sherlock long enough to locate what was out of place amidst the chaos of the kitchen.

He had to look three times before he spotted the little glass vial lying whole and undamaged in a little puddle of liquid next to a broken syringe. Carefully, without removing the hand that was monitoring Sherlock's pulse, John stretched out and was just able to roll the vial closer with the penlight. Before he could get a good look at the label, sirens wailed outside the window, and footsteps sounded on the stairs.

"Sherlock, the paramedics are here," John said. "They're going to take care of you, and Sarah and I will stay with you."

Two paramedics strode into the flat. "In the kitchen!" John called. "Be careful, lots of broken glass."

"All right, what have we got?" asked the lead paramedic.

"This is Sherlock Holmes," John told her. "He's not breathing on his own, he's tachy and seems to be paralyzed, got a couple of bumps to the head . . . and I think he's conscious, at least to some degree. Probably a drug overdose. If you give me a pair of gloves, I think the drug vial's over there."

The paramedic passed John a pair of gloves. "You'd be Dr. Watson?"

"Yes. This is Dr. Sawyer."

"Hello, Dr. Sawyer. Let me take over the bagging, and I'll get him on some O2."

Sarah sat back gratefully and flexed her cramping hands. John snapped the gloves on and picked up the vial.

"Oh, fuck. People, we've got an overdose of succinylcholine, dosage unknown, as well as blunt force head trauma." Sarah went pale at the implication. John ignored her. "Also, patient has a history of recreational drug use. We need caution with the sedatives."

The paramedics looked at each other. "Get a line going," the lead paramedic told her subordinate. "Etomidate, then lidocaine. We're going to try an RSI, then rapid transport."

John leaned over Sherlock's head. "Sherlock, they're going to give you a little stick and put you out for a while so they can put a tube in your throat to breathe for you. You'll probably wake up in hospital. I'm here, and Sarah is here."

He kept one hand on Sherlock's shoulder as the paramedics inserted the IV line and began to administer the drugs. After he estimated that a minute had passed, he peeled back Sherlock's eyelids and shone light in them again. There was no attempt to focus this time, and they could only assume that he was sedated enough to continue. The paramedics opened the intubation kit and descended upon Sherlock.

Lestrade chose that moment to make his entrance, accompanied by Mrs. Hudson. Her hands flew to her mouth, and Lestrade swallowed hard. John decided that Sherlock was safe in the hands of the paramedics for now and advanced toward Lestrade.

"We've got a serial killer on our hands. Probably medical personnel, uses this drug to kill people. It's called succinylcholine chloride, and it's a surgical paralytic. Looks like Sherlock got a visit from the killer. Thanks to Mrs. Hudson, Dr. Sawyer and I got here in time. I'm a viable suspect, but . . ." John's voice hitched only a moment, "I swear to you, I didn't do it."

Lestrade blinked, trying to make sense of what he had just heard. Sarah rose to her feet and came to put a hand on John's shoulder. "He's not a suspect," she said. "Not any more. Sherlock cleared him this morning."

John held out the glass vial. "This is the container that held the drug that poisoned Sherlock. See this number on the bottom? The manufacturer can trace this vial, see where it went after it left the factory. If we're lucky, the vial might even have the killer's fingerprints on it."

Lestrade shook himself. "Yes, of course. Thanks, John. I'll take this down to the lab." He extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to take the vial from John.

"Got him tubed," the lead paramedic called. "Docs? Someone want to ride along with him?"

"Where?" Sarah asked.

"University College Hospital."

Sarah nodded to John. "You go. I'll call some people there, let them know he's coming."

"Thanks." John scribbled a number down on his prescription pad and thrust it at Sarah. "Text the news to this number as well. Say that it's from me."

The paramedics loaded Sherlock onto a gurney, and John followed them downstairs and into the ambulance, holding the IV bag high and hooking it to a support inside the vehicle. The sirens blared, and the ambulance took off. John held Sherlock's hand all the way to the hospital, telling himself that he was simply monitoring Sherlock's still-racing pulse.

* * *

It was only when they reached University College Hospital A&E, five minutes later, that John released Sherlock and went to wait outside so that the emergency physicians could work unimpeded. The sudden change from action to inaction sat poorly with him, and he paced around the waiting area, counting off minutes in his head, visualizing the process of checking Sherlock's vitals, attaching him to a ventilator, and suturing the laceration on his head. His mobile buzzed, distracting him from his pacing for a moment.

_Many thanks for news. Am in Tajikistan, arranging immediate transport home. Your access at UCH confirmed. - MH_

John sighed as a small weight evaporated from his mind. Presently, a doctor emerged from the A&E area. "Dr. Watson?" she asked. John waved, and she approached him and held out her hand. "Dr. Watson, I'm Usha Chatterjee, Chair of Anaesthesiology here at UCH." Her handshake was firm. "I'm told you're here for Sherlock Holmes?"

"That's right."

"Unusual case; we don't get this kind of overdose very often outside a hospital. Okay, first of all, we've got him ventilated, so respiration is supported and stabilized. He's hyperkalaemic, so we're treating that with insulin and calcium, and we should have that under control soon. Do you happen to know how much succinylcholine he was given?"

John shook his head. "I found one vial, empty, along with a broken syringe and a bit of the drug spilled. I can't say how much of the drug got into him, or whether or not that was the only dose or the only drug."

Dr. Chatterjee pursed her lips. "We think he's transitioned to Phase II block; with the hyperkalaemia and the concussion, he'll be down for a while. We're going to admit him. I'm told that you've been authorized to stay with him. They're moving him upstairs now. I'll take you."

"Thank you." John followed Dr. Chatterjee to the room where Sherlock lay, limp and unresponsive, attached by a tube taped into his mouth to a ventilator that bleeped rhythmically, as well as a heart monitor, a peripheral nerve stimulator, and an IV line. His head had been bandaged. The ventilator showed regular, mechanical breaths, but the heart monitor showed a fast, unsteady beat. It looked as though Sherlock would be there for a while. But, John considered, he was lucky to be there at all.

"Is he conscious?" he asked.

Dr. Chatterjee sighed. "It's hard to tell," she said. "We didn't want him on too much sedation because of the head injury, so we're trying to wean him off it. Not too fast, though. The paralysis makes it hard to tell."

"Thanks." John went to sit at Sherlock's side. He wondered how much of the tachycardia was due to the drug and how much was from the sheer panic of conscious paralysis and dependence on a machine to provide vital breath. Dr. Chatterjee left the room with a reminder to John to push the call button if anything changed. John took Sherlock's hand again so that he would have some human contact among all the machinery.

"Hello, Sherlock, it's John. Back again. Don't know if you can hear me. You gave us all a scare, but it's okay. You're going to be all right. Dr. Chatterjee and her team are taking care of you, and I'm going to stay with you."

Sherlock's heart monitor spiked, a surge that John suspected was panic. John squeezed his hand and stroked his hair. "Don't worry. I know it's scary, but the succinylcholine will wear off in a while, and you'll be able to move again. I won't leave you. Lestrade is tracking down the poisoner right now."

Sherlock's heart slowed a little, though the beat remained less than steady. John kept up a steady stream of words, telling Sherlock about the routine things he had done at work that day, describing Mrs. Hudson's call and the mad rush back to Baker Street, talking about all the people, from Lestrade to Sarah to Mycroft to Mrs. Hudson, who cared about Sherlock and wished him well.

The thought struck him that this would be an appropriate moment to say a prayer. But John Watson was not a religious man, and he realized, with some chagrin, that he no longer knew any prayers. A single memory floated into the sudden void in his mind. He was nine years old again, a choirboy at All Souls, standing proudly in his red and white robes, watching his mother's beaming face as he sang. It had been years since John had attended any church, but he still watched football when Sherlock's schedule permitted. He hummed a little, recalling the melody, and observed as Sherlock's heart rate evened out a little. Softly, as though lulling a child to sleep, he sang.

_Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;_

_The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;_

_When other helpers fail and comforts flee,_

_Help of the helpless, oh abide with me._


	7. Darkness Be Over Me

**7. Darkness Be Over Me**

* * *

He hurt.

His muscles ached, and there was a searing fire in his core, as if his blood had turned to acid. Sherlock wanted to thrash his limbs and scream, but he could not move, and there was a tube jammed down his throat that hurt him and forced air in and out of his lungs. His eyes refused to open, leaving him trapped in a world of featureless darkness, where there was nothing but immobile pain.

It was unfair. It was inhumane. Even George Hudson, vomitous excuse for a human being that he had been, had received an anaesthetic before the Florida executioner had pumped poison into his veins.

There was nothing. There was no time, there was no space, the transport had almost completely fallen away, save only for the burning, aching pain, with nowhere to run and no time in which to escape, and the constant rushes of air that inflated and deflated his lungs, not quite in any rhythm that Sherlock was accustomed to experiencing. No matter how hard he willed it, nothing changed. Sometimes, at odd intervals, a short respite would come, when this intolerable existence, pathetic as it was, would fade. Sherlock could not predict when the fading would come, nor did he know how long it lasted or, indeed, how long he had been trapped in this nightmare.

Eventually, he realized that at least one portion of his body still existed. His right hand was pressed against something warm and soft and strong and sure. Someone was holding his hand. Sherlock mustered all of his considerable mental energy and focused on that handclasp. He did not quite manage to banish the pain and darkness and immobility, but he did make them . . . less important. Someone was holding his hand.

Now he could expand his focus to other things. He could still hear. An electronic bleep sounded in time with his heartbeat, and another machine thumped in the mechanical rhythm of the air in his chest. From far away, footsteps came and went. He knew those sounds. They were hospital sounds. And very close by, there was a voice, a familiar, comforting voice. It was John's thready tenor, singing softly and a little unsteadily. John had promised to stay with Sherlock, and he was there.

It went against all reason, but just knowing that John was with him made the pain and the isolation a little less oppressive. The very first thing that Sherlock had learned about John, that he had not deduced on his own, was that John would not let anything truly bad happen to Sherlock. If John said that the pain would go away and that Sherlock would be able to move again, then Sherlock was willing to believe that. So Sherlock settled his mind down to wait, and he listened. John told him stories, read articles from a back issue of the _British Journal of Medicine_ that he had requested from a passing nurse, and even sang a few simple songs when the despair threatened to overwhelm Sherlock again.

Sometimes other people would drop by. Nurses would arrive on a fairly regular basis, and John would step aside so that the nurses could run a mild electrical current through Sherlock's hand. The current didn't hurt much, certainly not as much as the rest of Sherlock, and John would always keep his hand on Sherlock's shoulder during the procedure. Once they put a needle into the vein in his right elbow, which he did not like at all, but John distracted him by talking about the tests that would be performed on his blood sample.

Sarah Sawyer made a brief visit, which, Sherlock gathered from her hushed tone, had been made possible by pulling some professional strings. He remembered that she had been in the flat as he lay dazed and breathless and terrified on the floor. It surprised him that she would think to visit him in hospital now.

He was less surprised to hear the nearly-authoritative tread of Detective Inspector Lestrade. "How is he?" Lestrade asked.

"Still blocked," came John's voice, "though the tachycardia seems to have eased up. We're still waiting on blood work to see about his potassium levels. Oh, and despite what it looks like, I'm fairly sure he's conscious and listening to us."

There was a pause, then, "Christ."

"Yup."

Lestrade sucked in a breath. "Well. Er. Um, Sherlock, you'll be pleased to know that we've traced the vial of succinylcholine you were given. Unfortunately, it came from that surgery. They don't report any of their stock missing, so we're having another look at the purchase records to see what's going on there."

"Not a drug we tend to use much there," John put in. "There wouldn't be a large supply."

"Well. I'll . . . I'll let you know if we find anything else. But right now . . . Sherlock, you're the closest thing we've got to a witness in this mess. I'll be back later, take your statement. When you're up for it. Christ. Get . . . get better soon, okay?" He coughed awkwardly, then left. John gave Sherlock's hand a little squeeze.

So that was it. Mrs. Porter was the succinylcholine killer Sherlock had been tracking. He thought back to her strange, tense visit and tried to deduce what had brought her there, to him in particular. Her intent had clearly been murder, without any cover, as Sherlock could not be passed off as a flu victim. Something must have rattled her, for her to have broken her pattern like that. Perhaps she had discovered that he was investigating and wanted to eliminate him? But why do it in such a public manner?

Between his racing thoughts and John's soothing chatter, Sherlock was able to ride out the time. The fiery pain in his muscles faded, leaving a more general ache that was still sharp but was at least nearly bearable. The nurses seemed pleased with the results when they sent the electric current through Sherlock's wrist. John left his side only twice. Once was to take a quick trip to the toilet, and the other was to confer briefly with another doctor just outside the door. He returned to Sherlock's side and took up his hand again.

"Good news. They've got your potassium under control, though you'll have to watch what you eat for a few days. Which, by the way, is not an excuse for not eating at all. Your train of four responses -" John tapped the electrodes on Sherlock's wrist "are getting better. Can you squeeze my hand?"

Sherlock put forth a mighty effort, and was rewarded with a slight movement in his thumb.

"Fantastic!" John said. "I'm going to get the nurses in here. I think you're coming out of it." His weight shifted, and Sherlock heard the faint chime of the call button. Within minutes, two nurses and a voice identifying herself as Dr. Usha Chatterjee appeared. The electrical current - train of four, John had called it - was repeated, and the nurses made encouraging noises. John ceded Sherlock's hand to Dr. Chatterjee, who asked Sherlock to squeeze several more times. Each time, Sherlock could respond with more strength and control. But squeezing hands was boring, and Sherlock's mind was starved for data, so he concentrated on other things. Soon, he was able to wrench his eyes open.

The first thing he saw, after his eyes adjusted to the glare of the overhead lights, was John, giving him an exhausted, relieved smile. "Welcome back," he said. "Won't be long before they can get that tube out of your throat."

The tube was an annoyance. It was uncomfortable, and Sherlock couldn't talk, and there were too many things that needed to be done. He tried to twist out of the nurses' grasp, but his muscles screamed in protest, and he flopped back on the pillow in irritation. Fortunately, John had lived with him long enough to anticipate some of his basic needs, and slipped a pencil and a pad of paper into Sherlock's hands.

_Laptop_, Sherlock scrawled. _Need to track Caroline Porter_.

John glanced at the pad just as Dr. Chatterjee decided that now would be the perfect time to flash a bright light in Sherlock's eyes. "The first may take a while," John said. "I'd have to make a call."

"Pupils equal and reactive to light," Dr. Chatterjee observed.

"Good," John replied. He turned his attention back to the pad and frowned. "Caroline Porter. Why is that name familiar?" His tongue poked out for a moment as he considered, then he blinked. "Is she - Sherlock, is this the name of the person who attacked you?"

Sherlock nodded.

John frowned. "Then it can't be any of our original suspects, we don't have anyone by that name working at the surgery. Why do I know that name? Does it mean anything to you? Apart from the obvious, I mean."

Sherlock shook his head.

"Sorry to interrupt," Dr. Chatterjee broke in. "How do you feel, Sherlock?"

Sherlock reclaimed the pad and pencil and wrote, _Hurt all over. Annoyed._

Dr. Chatterjee laughed. "Good, that's normal. You're going to be sore for a while, that's not an uncommon side effect in someone who's been depolarized as long as you have. I'm going to call in a respiratory therapist and see about when we can get you off the vent and breathing on your own."

_Now,_ Sherlock wrote.

"I'll see you in a bit," Dr. Chatterjee said, and left the room, taking the nurses with her.

"She's good," John commented. "Chair of Anaesthesiology here. I think Sarah called her while they were bringing you in. She's excited about your case, you know. Not a whole lot of people have survived this kind of assault. You could end up in a medical journal. I'll read it to you, if you like."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. _Visiting nurses in Annie Farrell's building_, he wrote.

"Already checked, remember? The nurse visited the day before she died. Too long for her to have used succinylcholine."

_Neighbours. Other old people in building. Their nurses._

Comprehension finally dawned on John's face. "Oh. Oh, I see. All right. I'll call Lestrade, see if he can get someone on that for you. He'll be glad to know how you're doing in any event."

John took his mobile out into the hallway, but stayed near the door so that Sherlock could still see him. Sherlock occupied himself writing down key names and questions, cursing the movement that intensified the ache in his arms. Every so often, he glanced up to make sure that John was still visible. He had a list that included _Caroline Porter, Arthur Porter, visiting nurse agency, locum CVs, missing keys_ and _schedule of deaths_ by the time John finished his calls and Dr. Chatterjee reappeared with the respiratory therapist. Sherlock had just enough time to hand the list off to John before the doctors descended upon him.

After twenty interminable minutes, Dr. Arscott, the respiratory therapist, decided that it would be safe to remove Sherlock from the ventilator. She called a pair of nurses, and Sherlock endured each excruciatingly dull stage of preparation for being extubated. Finally, the ventilator tube was disconnected and suctioned, the tape had been removed from his face, and they were ready. John took Sherlock's hand, Dr. Chatterjee put her hand behind his neck, and Dr. Arscott took the breathing tube.

"Deep, slow breaths," she commanded.

Sherlock sucked in air, a little unsteadily. Dr. Arscott put her gloved hand in his mouth, and something deflated, relieving part of the choking sensation of the tube.

"You're doing fine, Sherlock," John said. "Almost done."

Dr. Chatterjee slid an arm around Sherlock's shoulders for extra support. Dr. Arscott made a final check of the tubes and catheters. "Okay, Sherlock," she said. "One more deep breath . . . and cough."

Sherlock coughed, Dr. Arscott pulled, and the tube slithered out of Sherlock's throat. Nurses congratulated him as they dabbed gauze pads around his mouth and rinsed and suctioned it. Sherlock tried to reaccustom himself to using his aching jaw. His chest hurt, and he felt light-headed. Perhaps this had not been such a good idea after all. He squeezed John's hand.

"You did it," John said. "You did great. You'll feel better in just a tick."

Dr. Arscott slipped an oxygen mask over Sherlock's nose and mouth, and some of the light-headedness faded. Sherlock had hoped to be able to give John instructions as soon as the tube came out, but now that the moment had come, his throat was sore, and he was embarrassingly glad of the chance to lie back and rest for a moment.

Dr. Arscott and Dr. Chatterjee stayed for another half an hour to monitor Sherlock, and concluded that he would not drop dead any time soon. After a brief consultation, Dr. Chatterjee gave Sherlock a broad smile. "You're doing great," she said. "We're going to keep you overnight for observation. Dr. Arscott will have an incentive spirometer sent up, and you should use that; Dr. Watson can help you. The muscle aches will go away over the next few hours. We'll do another exam tomorrow, and you'll probably be ready to go home." She patted his hand, and the medical team left.

John sat back in his chair, smiling broadly. "That's wonderful news," he said. "You're really very lucky, you know." He offered Sherlock a cup of water with a straw, which eased Sherlock's sore throat a little.

A short time later, there was another knock on the door, though Sherlock was sure that it must be well past normal visiting hours. "Come in," he rasped.

Lestrade ushered Sarah into the room, both of them looking relieved. "You're talking again," Lestrade observed. "Never thought I'd say this, but I'm damn glad."

Sherlock elected to conserve his energy and not dignify that remark with a response. Instead, he watched as Sarah set her large turquoise handbag down on the bedside table, observing the wry smile that John aimed at the hideous object.

"I brought you some things," she told him. "First of all, you must be starving with a sore throat, so these might help." She produced a large bunch of grapes from her handbag and set them on a paper plate. Sherlock's mind recoiled at the cliché, but John nodded to him, and he ate a grape for show. The cool fruit did feel good against his throat, and he managed two more before his curiosity got the better of him. Sarah smiled and reached into her bag again. "John said to bring you this," she said, and set his laptop on the bed. Sherlock reached for it eagerly, desperate to continue his research.

"Your landlady let me in," Sarah added. "She sends you lots of love."

Lestrade turned a laugh into a cough. "Do you feel up to a bit of chatting, Sherlock?" he asked.

Sherlock nodded. "Caroline Porter," he said. "The woman in the flat, that was her name. She said she was looking for her husband, but that was obviously a lie." He ate another grape and observed a flash of recognition in Lestrade's face. "Do you know her? She was a short woman, sixty-five or so, dressed all in black, with a black hat. She carried the drug in her handbag. That was black, too, about eight inches long, five inches high, made of leather, silver chain handles, embossed with flowers near the clasp -"

Sarah's head snapped up. "A silver ball clasp, with a little rip near the frame?"

Sherlock blinked in surprise. "Yes. How did you know?"

Sarah's face went pale, and John immediately jumped up and guided her to sit down in the chair. "That's - that's Libby's handbag, that you described." She glanced at John, then at Lestrade. "Sorry. Elizabeth Warshaw. She's a nurse, one of the locum nurses at our surgery, and she does some shifts at Barts, too. But I don't understand. You said her name was Caroline Porter?"

"Yes, she talked about her husband, Arthur, and her children."

Lestrade's eyes bulged. "Arthur Porter? Did she happen to mention how many children?"

"Three," Sherlock replied. "Two boys and a girl. Why?"

Lestrade pulled out his mobile. "Got to put in a call to Liverpool. You may be onto something big, Sherlock. You wouldn't remember it, I guess, you'd have been only, what, ten or eleven at the time." He looked around at John and Sarah. "Maybe one of you might remember. The Porter case. A family murdered up in Liverpool."

Sarah looked blank, but something dawned in John's eyes. "I think . . . an abandoned house, maybe? Gruesome story, caught my attention as a teenager."

"That's the one."

John frowned. "They never did solve that case, did they?"

Lestrade took a deep breath and glanced at Sherlock. "He might have just changed that." His mouth set in a grim line, Lestrade strode out into the hallway to call Liverpool. John and Sarah exchanged puzzled glances. Sherlock flipped open his laptop and started searching the net.


	8. Justice Sleeps No More

**8. Justice Sleeps No More**

* * *

Not for the first time, John was impressed by Lestrade's organisational abilities. The man might not have the most intuitive mind in the world, nor the most active imagination, but when it came to marshalling the forces at his command, Detective Inspector Lestrade could easily have taught master classes at Sandhurst. Upon realising that he was sitting on top of both an emergent serial killer and a quarter-century-old cold case, with his primary witness and consultant confined to a hospital bed, Lestrade set about transforming Sherlock's room into a field command post with admirable efficiency. He commandeered the fax machine from the nurses' station down the hall and called DS Donovan to be his eyes and ears at the Yard.

For his part, Sherlock was equally commanding. He demanded a copy of Nurse Warshaw's CV, heedless of the fact that it was after hours and the surgery was closed.

"You have the key, don't you?" Sherlock asked Sarah. "You can go and get a copy, and no one will be the wiser. And you can double-check your supplies of succinylcholine while you're there."

"We already did inventory," Sarah replied. "We don't keep much succinylcholine on hand, and we're not missing any of our stock."

"Obviously. But what's the best place to hide something? In plain sight, in a crowd. You'll have too much of some drug, and the succinylcholine will be hidden there."

Comprehension dawned in Sarah's face, and she gathered up her large bag, which John had already resolved never to mock again, ready to go out. Just then, Dr. Arscott returned with the incentive spirometer. "I've been told what's going on in here," she said, "and I'll allow it as long as you don't tire him out too much. But, Sherlock, I want you to use the spirometer. We need to make sure that your lungs are working properly and that you're getting enough oxygen."

"Dull," Sherlock replied.

"Oh, his lungs are working just fine," John muttered under his breath.

Sarah glanced at them, and then gave a sly smile. "I'll make you a deal, Sherlock," she said. "You use the spirometer at least three times while I'm gone, and I'll let you have that CV."

"I'll show you how to use it," John added, in his most helpful voice.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed, and he hunched up his shoulders to begin what looked to be a truly epic pout, but Sarah stared him down with the implacable face that one tended to acquire halfway through med school. Eventually, Sherlock sighed and lay back against his pillow.

"Fine," he snarled. Sarah winked at John and made a quick exit. John stuck the tube of the spirometer in Sherlock's mouth.

"Blow," he commanded.

Sherlock glared, but he puffed at the machine anyway. Lestrade stared at him, then glanced at the door, where Sarah had departed. "That's amazing," he said. "Can we hire her permanently?"

John smirked. "You should see her with the paediatric cases. My drill sergeant couldn't do better."

Sherlock flipped them the two-finger salute.

"But, seriously," Lestrade said, "John, have you ever considered retraining for forensics? You have a real talent for it, and you've more than proved your worth. I'm sure I could work out a deal with the Met to sponsor you if you needed the financial aid."

Before John could make a polite answer, Sherlock batted the tube of the spirometer away. "Absolutely not," he said. "John is my blogger."

John laughed at that. "I'm flattered by the offer," he said, and he really was, "but I meant what I said about living patients. I'll look at a few dead bodies for you, but I really do want to focus on the living for a while. Best part of the job, you know?"

Lestrade shrugged. "Yeah. Thought so. But I just had to ask."

"I know. Speaking of which," John glanced down at Sherlock, whose eyes were just beginning to turn glassy, "I know one living body that needs to take a rest."

"I am resting, John. I've been stuck in this bloody hospital bed for far too long." But Sherlock's hands fell away from the laptop, and he didn't protest when John took it from him. A quick glance at the screen revealed that Sherlock had been looking up information on visiting nurse agencies in one tab, and had just started to type a query about the Porter murder in another.

There was a knock on the door, and Donovan entered, followed by a woman in a business suit. "Hello, Freak," she said, a smile tugging across her lips. She turned to Lestrade and handed him an envelope. "I've got the photo array made up. As soon as the Freak's done with it, type up the results and fax them to Liverpool. Detective Inspector Singleton is standing by with a justice of the peace who'll fax you a warrant for their case. Dinah's here to take the Freak's statement for our case."

"Ah." Lestrade nodded. Sherlock, John, this is Dinah Harrington, Crown Prosecutor. Dinah, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson."

"Hello," Harrington said.

Lestrade opened the envelope and handed Sherlock a card with six photos of elderly women on it. "Do you recognize any of these?"

Sherlock glanced at them. "That one," he said, pointing. "That's the woman who . . . visited me." John's heart sank when he recognized the woman in the photo as his colleague Nurse Libby Warshaw. Sherlock pointed to another photo. "That one needs to see a real dentist instead of whoever's been selling her those cheap dentures -"

"Yes, thank you, Sherlock," Lestrade said, quickly switching the card for one with older photos of middle-aged women. "How about this card?"

Sherlock took a while longer studying the second card. "That's the same woman," he said at last, pointing to another photo. "Younger, of course, and without the glasses." John glanced at the photo and surreptitiously completed Sherlock's web query about the Porter murder. The second result turned up the same photo posted on a website dedicated to unsolved murders, labelled _Caroline Porter, Murderous Mother, Nefarious Nurse_.

Dinah Harrington nodded. "That's good enough for me. Justice Haire is usually in a pub near here at this hour. I'll have a warrant shortly." She nodded, and left the room. Donovan took some quick notes, and then gathered up the photo arrays.

"I'll send this to Liverpool. Keep the fax on. Get better, Freak." And she followed Harrington out the door.

Sherlock turned to John. "You interrupted me. I was researching this Porter case."

John handed him the spirometer. "You need to rest and use this. We'll fill you in."

Sherlock puffed. John glanced over at Lestrade. Lestrade shrugged. "It was about twenty-five years ago, up in Liverpool. The Porter family went on holiday for a month, but never returned. When the light bulbs started to burn out, the neighbours investigated. They found the husband, Arthur, lying dead on the sofa, and the bodies of the three children, two boys and a girl, laid out in the kitchen. There was also Arthur Porter's elderly mother, dead in her bedroom. The police found a letter from Arthur's wife Caroline, a nurse who'd recently been made redundant, confessing to the murders, and explaining that she had done it to save the family from lives of sin and moral turpitude. By the time the crime was discovered, she'd long since vanished."

"Incompetents," Sherlock said. "She should have been apprehended when she tried to apply for a new job."

Lestrade sighed. "Records weren't as good back in the Eighties as they are now. You might have solved it, but you were still in primary school at the time."

Sherlock shrugged and puffed again at the spirometer. Sarah appeared at the door a short time later, and John jumped to his feet. Sarah smiled faintly at him, and then turned to Sherlock.

"You were right," she said. "Half of the metronidazole supply turned out to be succinylcholine. And, since you've clearly been good about the spirometer, here's Warshaw's CV."

Sherlock stretched out eager hands to take the document. At that moment, several things happened at once. The fax machine whirred to life, spitting out a document that looked official. Donovan and Harrington reappeared, bearing another document. And John's mobile buzzed. He flipped it open as Lestrade dealt with the incoming documents. "John Watson."

"John, you've got to come home quickly," came Mrs. Hudson's voice. "That horrible woman is back again, snooping around at the windows!"

"Don't let her in!" John snapped. Everyone in the room turned to stare at him. He turned to Lestrade. "Mrs. Hudson says that Nurse Warshaw - Porter, whatever her name is, is at our flat, right now."

"She's eliminating witnesses," Sherlock said.

Lestrade pulled the document from the fax machine and stood up. "We're on our way. I've got the Liverpool warrant. Is that the London one?" Harrington nodded, and Lestrade took it from her. "Donovan, you're with me. John, we may need a medic on the scene. Everyone else, wait here for my call."

John paused only for a brief word to Sarah. "Take care of Sherlock. Use the arm that you beat up Chinese gangsters with, if you have to." He gave her a comradely pat on the arm in question, then followed Lestrade and Donovan out the door.

* * *

The police car screamed through the traffic, and made it to Baker Street in less than five minutes. The woman pounding at the door to 221 turned when she heard the siren, and John's stomach clenched when he saw the familiar face. "That's her!" he cried. "That's Libby Warshaw!"

The woman hurried down the street. Donovan erupted from the car even as Lestrade applied the parking brake, and raced after her, her young, fit legs more than a match for the elderly nurse.

John extracted himself from the car a moment later, pulled out his key, and hurried inside. He found Mrs. Hudson in her sitting room, pale and shaken, but otherwise unharmed. "Oh, John," she said. "After what happened to poor Sherlock, I don't think I could ever forget that woman's face, and then here she turned up again, and I was just so scared, I couldn't think . . ."

"You did exactly the right thing, Mrs. Hudson," he assured her. "You didn't panic, and you called for help. Both times. Sherlock's going to be fine, and we're going to get this . . . this monster off the street."

Mrs. Hudson was too agitated to sit still, and insisted on going outside to stay close to Lestrade. John escorted her to the door just in time to see Donovan marching Libby Warshaw back to the car, a look of grim triumph on her face. "You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court," she recited loudly, so as to be heard above the torrent of racial abuse that Warshaw was shouting. "Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

Libby Warshaw's face was contorted with rage, and she actually spat at John when she spotted him. "You!" she snarled. "I should have known it was you behind all that snooping, you disgusting little poof. Not even holy judgment on that creepy boyfriend of yours gets through to you, does it?"

At the news that the assault that had nearly killed Sherlock had been meant as little more than a distraction, John had to struggle hard against his decades of schooling in not hitting little old ladies. He was saved when his mobile buzzed again. He flipped it open to see a text from Sherlock.

_If neighbour's missing key is in her bag, she is Mrs. Farrell's poisoner. - SH_

John let out a bitter, mirthless laugh of relief that Sherlock was well enough to text, and showed the message to Lestrade. Lestrade nodded and made a note of the text. Both he and John were still looking at the mobile when Sherlock's next message arrived.

_Come to hospital at once. Help required. Sarah is making me eat grapes. - SH_

Lestrade barked out a harsh laugh. "God, but that's good to hear."

John smiled and texted a quick reply.

_Advice from ex-Army: Discretion is better part of valour. Eat the grapes. - JW_

* * *

Sherlock was formally discharged from University College Hospital the next afternoon, after a thorough examination by Dr. Chatterjee and some paperwork that, in the finest universal tradition of hospitals, took far too long. Sherlock wanted to walk home, claiming that the chill late autumn air would be bracing, but John refused. "It's too soon, you're still recovering from the concussion you got when you hit your head on the table. I'll pay for a cab, and you can go walking in Regent's Park tomorrow."

Sherlock grumbled something that John couldn't quite make out, but acquiesced to the taxi. Once inside, he shut his eyes and leaned back against the seat, and John knew he had made the right choice. "We'll be home in ten minutes, and I'll give you something for your headache then," he promised, and was gratified to see Sherlock's frown relax a little.

Mrs. Hudson was waiting at the door to welcome them home and make a little fuss over Sherlock. While John busied himself installing Sherlock on the sofa and looking for the paracetamol, Mrs. Hudson brought up a tray with tea and sandwiches, which Sherlock accepted without a word, either of thanks or argument.

"Lestrade found the key in Nurse Warshaw - sorry, Porter's handbag," John said, once they had all settled in. "That was clever. Pity I had to run out before you finished solving that. How did you work it out in the end?"

"Obvious." Sherlock took a sip of tea. "The last employer listed on her CV before the surgery was Bingham Visiting Nurses Agency. Mrs. Harley, who lived two doors down from Annie Farrell, had a regular appointment with a nurse from that agency. Mrs. Harley kept a spare key to Annie Farrell's flat, and mentioned that it was missing when I talked to her. She's old and thought she'd misplaced it, but I suspected that it had been stolen. Whoever took it could let themselves in to Annie Farrell's flat while her daughter had popped off to do the shopping, and injected Annie Farrell through her IV bag, which would explain why you found no stray needle marks and no missing pills in Annie Farrell's prescriptions."

"Brilliant," John said. "She confessed to it, you know. On the way down to the Yard. She couldn't stop confessing. Neither Lestrade nor Donovan had to ask her a thing. She talked about Mrs. Farrell, the flu deaths at Barts and the surgery, and . . . and you."

Mrs. Hudson shivered, and reached out to squeeze Sherlock's hand.

"Anything interesting?" Sherlock asked, his voice almost as self-assured as when John had just met him.

"Try disgusting," John replied. "Decades of hatred festering inside her. It was as if we had lanced a boil. She hated black people, Asian people, poor people, gay people . . . anyone who didn't fit her image of someone well to do and upstanding. That was why she killed her family, all those years ago, to save them from the filth of the world and deliver them to God."

Sherlock was silent for a moment. "That . . . is irrational."

John shrugged. "I don't think she is entirely rational. She's certainly not a well woman. I didn't do a full psychiatric evaluation, of course, but it doesn't take an intellect like yours to see it."

Mrs. Hudson pursed her lips, clearly trying to decide whether or not to feel sorry for the mentally ill woman who had come so close to killing Sherlock. "What will happen to her?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'd think that her solicitor would plead diminished responsibility, but I don't know how it'll go from there. I wouldn't be surprised if we're all called to testify at her trial."

"Well," Mrs. Hudson said, a note of steel in her voice, "I shall be glad to do so if I'm called." Her tone softened a little, and she petted Sherlock's hand. "You rest now, dear, and let John take care of you tonight. You'll be back chasing murderers before you know it." She gave Sherlock a little kiss on the uninjured part of his forehead, and left the flat.

Warm and full of tea, Sherlock did not object to the coddling, and John knew that he was exhausted. "Lie down," he said. "Go to sleep. You'll feel better in the morning."

Sherlock curled into the sofa cushions, and John draped an afghan over him. "My lab equipment," Sherlock murmured. "It's broken. I heard it when I fell."

John glanced at the kitchen. Mrs. Hudson had cleaned up the broken glass sometime after John and the paramedics had taken Sherlock away, and the kitchen looked surprisingly empty without a complete chemistry set taking up most of the table space. "I wouldn't worry about it," John said. "You turn out to have a surprising number of people who care about you. Who knows what a well-behaved high-functioning sociopath might find waiting for him on Christmas morning?"

Sherlock hummed a little, and drifted off to sleep, presumably dreaming of dancing severed heads. John watched him breathe for a while, just to make sure, and then went off to his own bed.

* * *

END

* * *

Afterword: Many thanks to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story! I certainly enjoyed writing it, and there may be more in this fandom in the future.


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